Kemal Ataturk was born
in
Salonika
, in 1881. That city in northern
Greece
(known also as
Macedonia
,) was still part of the
Ottoman Empire
. From his earliest days, he did not behave as a good Muslim; his mother
often remarked about his lack of respect for “Allah’s
Shadow on earth.” She was referring to the Ottoman Sultan in
Istanbul
, who was not only the Ruler of the empire, but acted as the Caliph of the
worldwide Islamic Umma. Mustapha Kemal, as his full name was, enrolled in
the army, and soon began to climb in the ranks of the officer corps.

The Ottomans joined
Germany
and
Austria
against the Allies in WWI. When the war ended with the defeat of
Germany
and its allies, it appeared as if the Ottomans were going to lose not only
their distant territories, but a good part of the Turkish heartland.
Mustapha Kemal rallied the remnants of the Ottoman Army, and managed to
defeat the Allies, and forced them to leave
Turkey
. He became the undisputed leader of the country, and earned the honorary
title of “Ataturk,” i.e.
the Father
of the Turks!

Ataturk had many
ambitious plans for his country. He declared
Turkey
a republic, abolished the Caliphate in 1924, and invited Western scholars
to re-write Turkish laws by secularizing them. Other changes followed in
rapid succession: the Arabic-based Ottoman script was replaced by a
Latin-based alphabet. Men were no longer permitted to wear the fez, and
women were forbidden to wear the veil. However, we should not imagine that
Turkey
adopted a truly Western democratic model. This fact was made clear
recently in an article published by the Italian online magazine Chiesa, dated March 22,
2006:

“[…]
in fact, Turkish secularism has little in common with the liberal,
Enlightenment-inspired doctrine of the so-called separation between Church
and state in the public arena. In Islam, whether fundamentalist or radical
or moderate, there is no distinction between the religious and the
political arena; the two realities interpenetrate each other. [...] In the
Christian world, on the contrary, there are two powers, that of God and
that of Caesar; these can be associated or separate, they can be in
harmony or in conflict, as has often been the case in history – but they
are always two powers, distinct from each other and autonomous in their
respective areas of competence.”

After the
death of Ataturk in 1938, the secular tradition continued under the
tutelage of the army. His successor, Ismet
Inönüwas
a former officer in the Ottoman Army. He continued the policies of his
predecessor. Certain basic Islamic traditions such as the Call of Prayer chanted in Arabic, had to be done in Turkish. And
those devout Turks of Anatolia would no longer be permitted to go on the Hajj!
Still, as the article in Chiesa
put it

“But Turkish Islam, expelled from
the public sphere, survives and prospers in civil society: in the numerous
Sufi confraternities and in the pro-Islamic political movements that have
emerged in recent decades. This complex Islamic movement includes various
tendencies within itself, both the fundamentalist tendency inspired by the
radical movements present in almost all the Islamic countries that preach
jihad against the “atheist and corrupt” West and want shari’a to be
the law of the state, and the moderate tendency that is eager for dialogue
with modernity and interested in forming friendly relationships with the
Western world. [...]”

Having explained the
background of modern
Turkey
and the attempt of its leaders to secularize all aspects of Turkish
culture, I submit the following thesis: The history of
Turkey
since 1918, serves as a Case Study
in the Impossibility to Permanently Secularize Islam.

Successive
developments within the
Turkish
Republic
, since the death of Ataturk in 1938, demonstrate that his great efforts
to permanently change his country’s allegiance to Islam were not to be
successful. Both he, and his immediate successors, failed to realize how
deep-rooted Islam was, especially in the rural areas of
Turkey
. It would turn out that the citizens of
Istanbul
and
Ankara
, and other metropolitan centers near the Mediterranean, were unable to
counter-balance the efforts of the faithful Muslims of Anatolia (central
and eastern
Turkey
) who sought to restore to Islam the privileged status it had enjoyed in
the life of their country. The very democratic system that gave every
citizen the right to vote eventually brought about the victory of a
nascent Islamic party. This proved that more Turks preferred some version
of the Ottoman Islamic tradition to prevail rather than the secularized
ideology of Ataturk.

I have been musing
along these thoughts ever since the rise to power of an Islamist leader,
Recep Tayyib Erdogan. Finally, an article in the Wall Street Journal of
March 18, 2006, reminded me how urgent the subject has become. The title
of the article was: After Ataturk. The
Interview with Mr. Erdogan had
this sub-title: Talking Turkey with
Ankara
's Islamist prime minister. It was conducted by Robert L. Pollock, a
member of The Wall Street Journal's editorial board. (Recep is pronounced: “Rejep.”
The letter “c” in Turkish
has the equivalence of “j”
in English or French.)

After exchanging some
pleasantries, Mr. Erdogan remarked about a Turkish movie, “Valley of the Wolves –
Iraq
” that Mr. Pollock had seen, and said, “They
might ban you from re-entering the
United States
.” Now when the interviewer asked the Prime Minister whether he had
seen the film,he did not answer directly but asked in return: “What
did you think of the movie?” “To which I reply that it made me
sad. While there are many things one might criticize about
U.S.
policy in
Iraq
the suggestion that
U.S.
troops are murdering and dismembering Iraqis to facilitate a Jewish
organ-selling scheme isn't one of them.”